Stormy Day Mysteries 5-Book Cozy Murder Mystery Series Bundle
Page 119
Brianna said to me, “I heard from a friend that the role of Kinley was actually cast months ago, and the open casting call here was just a publicity stunt to sell a carefully crafted narrative.”
“I never knew you were such a conspiracy nut.”
She waggled her eyebrows. “How much do you know about microwaves and government monitoring?”
I rolled my eyes. We had a few known conspiracy theorists in town. They came into the gift shop sometimes to talk to Brianna when the library turfed them out. She humored them and took notes for her web comic. Her art was a great way for her to take life's lemons and turn them into lemonade.
A few people came over to chat with me.
Ruby Sparkes came over to give Brianna one of her warm, matronly hugs. They chatted for a few minutes about Brianna's comic, and how things were going at the store. She smirked as she asked my employee if her boss was being good to her, or if she was looking for a career change.
“Don't you dare poach my best employee,” I told Ruby.
She tilted her head back and roared laughter before giving me a hug as well.
“Aren't you adorable,” she said. “What's Logan Sanderson dressed up as? A scarecrow? Or the Tin Man?”
“Probably his regular business-casual look,” I said. “He's not here with me. He was tired, and his sister claims to be dangerously allergic to both hay and folk music.”
Ruby swayed as her eyes flitted around without focus. She'd been enjoying the punch, by the look of her.
After a moment, she patted me lovingly on the shoulder. “Stormy Day, never mind what people say. Logan's a good fella.”
I asked, “What do you mean?”
She flopped her head from side to side, her purple-red curls bouncing softly. “You two suit each other,” she said. “You're a real power couple. If one of you runs for mayor someday, you can whip this whole town into shape!”
“Ah, the power,” I joked. “Imagine me as mayor. I would appoint Jeffrey as one of my chief advisers, of course. Do you think I can get people to call me Her Royal Highness?”
“Sure,” she said with a hand wave, barely listening to me. “If you'll excuse me, I see a gentleman I'd like to ply with more punch.” With a girlish giggle, she was off.
I turned to say something to Brianna, but she was gone, off talking to some guys her age. Rather than cramp her style, I wandered off in search of my companions.
The alcohol in the punch was tickling at my brain in a pleasant way.
Tonight was going to be fun.
I couldn't say what it was, exactly, but I had a strong premonition the hootenanny was going to end with a bang.
Chapter 39
When Rain Nor Heat started up again, Kyle insisted I dance with him.
“Hang on a minute,” I said.
Our hosts had dropped a sheet from a hay loft, forming a makeshift projection screen. Quinn was setting up her laptop with a projector, and displaying recent photographs of her daughter dressed up for her starring role. After a dozen photos, the screen abruptly turned a bright, blinding white. It was a business card, an advertisement for the photographer.
“That guy's name looks familiar,” I said to Kyle.
He looked up just as the advertisement dissolved into an image of Quinby's angelic face as she posed with a sword she could barely hold up.
“Let's dance,” he said. “No more stalling. You know that expression, dance with the one who brought you? Come on already. I promise I'll keep one eye on the screen and only one eye on those legs of yours.”
“Dimples, I'm only going to dance with you if you promise not to look at my legs at all.”
“I can only promise to try,” he said, giving me a double eyebrow raise as he steered me onto the hay-strewn wooden dance floor.
The song stopped before we'd taken even one dance step. Everyone clapped, and a few people called out requests. The band immediately started up a new tune, this one a much slower tempo. All around us, couples got closer, the women wrapping their arms around their dates' necks.
“When in Rome,” Kyle said, placing his hand on my waist.
I put my hands loosely on his shoulders and tried to relax. I hadn't danced this way in years, but it came back to me. They say the body has a memory of its own.
After a minute, I said, “Stop it.”
His arms stiffened, and he increased the space between us. “Stop what? I'm not too close, am I?”
“That's fine. But you keep gazing at me. I can feel your eyes on me. Look at the screen up there and tell me what's strange about the name of that photographer.”
“I'm not gazing at you.” He blew air up his face, fluffing his fair hair away from his sweaty forehead. “You're basically a big sister to me.”
“Good,” I said.
“What would you think if I started calling Finnegan Dad?”
“I would think you had acquired some sort of brain parasite.”
“He could be my dad, sort of. There are two ways I could make it legitimate.”
I frowned up at him. “Is one of those ways getting adopted by him? You seem a bit old for adoption.”
“Or I could marry your sister,” he said. “Sunny.”
My feet stopped moving. “That will be difficult, since she doesn't live here.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Hasn't Dad—I mean Finnegan—told you? She's coming back.”
I snorted and started dancing again. “I'll believe it when I see it.”
“Sooner or later, everyone comes home again. When I moved away, I thought it was for good, but look at me now.”
“Maybe I will.” I leaned back and looked him up and down. If he was going to gaze at me and my legs, I could do the same. “You've got a trim figure, Dimples. How do you keep all those bottles of beer and donuts from settling around your waistline?”
“By hitting the gym five days a week. You should come with me some time. I can introduce you to my personal trainer, but I must warn you. My trainer will make you cry.”
“I don't cry,” I said. Even as I uttered the lie, I didn't know why. I'd cried more than once over Colt facing a homicide charge, and about Samantha Sweet's family being torn apart. I'd cried more in the last week than I had through my entire breakup with Christopher.
The song finished, and Quinn took to the stage. She and her daughter, Quinby, were dressed in matching trench coats.
“Thank you all for coming,” Quinn gushed.
Everyone applauded, and the louder it got, the taller she stood.
“On behalf of my parents and the other Baudelaires, as well as the McCabes, I'm so glad you could make it. This might be our last Autumn Hootenanny for a while, because we'll be super busy soon.” She patted her stomach. A ripple ran through the crowd. Was she announcing they were having a second child?
She yanked her hand away from her stomach and clutched the microphone.
“Because of Quinby's starring role,” she said quickly. “Some of the filming will be on location right here, at the farm! Isn't that wonderful news?”
The crowd cheered. Quinn raised both hands in the air forming a V for Victory.
She scanned the crowd, stopping on me as she brought the microphone to her mouth again. “And now I'd like to invite two of my oldest and dearest friends up on stage to join me in a cheer.”
I stiffened and glanced around like a cornered rodent, but there was no escape. Jessica had gotten me into my cheerleader uniform for a reason, and this was it. As she dragged me onto the stage, Quinn unbuttoned her trench coat and tossed it aside. Her daughter did the same. Quinn was wearing her old head cheerleader uniform, and her daughter was wearing a smaller replica.
The next several minutes were both familiar and strange. We did some cheers, and my body remembered most of the moves. The crowd roared. They seemed to enjoy it almost as much when we messed up as when we got the routines right. I was sweating like crazy from the exertion, but I didn't care. I lost myself in the group effervescence. I w
as, for the first time in what felt like forever, having a great time.
For the second-to-last song of the evening, Rain Nor Heat gave me a chill down my spine with their original song about a vengeful ghost in Colorado who lured a killer off a mountain cliff.
Kyle Dempsey, who'd gone outside to take a phone call, came to tell me some good news. “I've got Trigger Canuso waiting at the station. She asked for me specifically.”
I gave him a high five. “You're going to crack this case wide open!”
“Thanks to you,” he said. “I don't think we'd have broken her if you hadn't leaned on me to work a little harder.”
“Dimples, I can't take credit for this one. I feel like I've been more hindrance than help.”
He glanced down at my pleated cheerleader skirt. “At least we didn't wreck a cruiser.”
“Not yet.”
“Speaking of cruisers, I need to get back to the station pronto, and I'm your chauffeur.”
“Go ahead. Jessica and I will hitch a ride back into town with someone else.”
Right then, Jessica appeared beside us. “Are you talking about me?”
“You're just like Jeffrey,” I said. “I say your name and you appear.”
She yawned as she looked at the keys in Kyle's hand. “Oh, good. We're leaving,” she said. “I'm so tired.”
“It's up to you,” Kyle said, and he explained how he was leaving now and heading to the station.
Jessica yawned again. “Would it be an obstruction of justice to get dropped off at my house?”
Kyle grinned, dimples deepening. “It's no problem to add five minutes to my trip.”
I asked Kyle, “Will you let me know how it goes at the station?”
“If it goes well, I'm sure you'll find out soon enough.” He paused, frowning as though fighting an internal battle. “Can you keep something to yourself?”
“Better than you,” I said.
“Trigger didn't do it.” He glanced around, making sure no one was paying much attention to our conversation. “The last time I talked to Trigger, she swore she drove past the house because she was interested in buying it as a rental property, and she saw Samantha going inside at eleven o'clock on the day of.”
I snorted. “How convenient that Trigger just happened to be driving by at that time.”
Kyle shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Sometimes people end up in the wrong place at the worst time.”
“Good luck getting the truth out of her.”
“It's going to be a late night,” he said.
“Maybe when I'm done helping Quinn clean up here, I'll catch a ride to the station. Can I sit in the observation room if I bring you something to eat?”
“It's Misty Falls. Everything's closed by now.”
“I happen to have a place,” I said knowingly. “The best hot dogs in town.”
“You're on.” He gave me a wink before turning to leave with Jessica.
As I watched them walk away, I noticed how Kyle Dempsey took Jessica's hand and led her through the crowd so she didn't get knocked down by enthusiastic dancers.
I tilted my head and wondered, Kyle and Jessica? Maybe. If she didn't come clean with Mitch about the misunderstanding, she had other options.
The band played one more original tune and then, when everyone begged for an encore, two more classics.
After they unplugged the music equipment and turned on a few industrial flood lamps, the crowd quickly thinned and dispersed.
I'd gotten in such a good mood doing the cheers, that I'd happily agreed to help Quinn clean up the barn and stack up the rental chairs. She and Chip had arrived in separate vehicles, so he gave his blond wife a kiss goodbye and left carrying their sleeping daughter.
An hour later, the novelty of stacking chairs had worn off, plus my body was starting to send me subtle signals that I should have stretched before doing so many enthusiastic high kicks up on the stage.
Quinn thanked me for being such a supportive team member.
“You're welcome,” I said. I would have followed up with something sarcastic about no longer being a member of her personal entourage, but I was too tired to hassle the woman. Let her enjoy her glory, I thought. Being a stage mother was going to be difficult, and she had no idea what was in store for her. Then again, if anyone was suited to the role, it was Quinn.
“Grab my laptop and we can get out of here,” she said.
“Sure thing.”
The laptop had been disconnected from the projector, which had left already with the AV rental company, along with the large speakers. As I leaned over to close the screen, I paused to watch the slideshow that was still running.
When the image showing the name and website for the photographer flashed up, I hit the spacebar to pause the slideshow.
The name of the photographer was Dwayne Greer.
As in Dwayne Effrain Greer.
His name was one of the ones on the sign-in sheet for Samantha's last open house before the murder. The police had looked into his whereabouts on the following Monday simply because he had a criminal record with some priors for public indecency and intoxication.
He'd checked out, with an alibi for the whole day. He'd been in Seattle.
The knowledge of this key fact shifted around everything I knew about the Michael Sweet homicide. Plus there was tonight's bombshell from Kyle about Trigger allegedly seeing Samantha at the house.
“Stormy, you're not going to barf, are you?”
I snapped the laptop shut and smiled at Quinn. “That punch was powerful stuff,” I said. “Do you mind if I take one last trip to the outhouse before we drive back to town?”
“Be my guest,” she said. “But the exterior lights are all taken down.”
“Can I take your phone and use the flashlight function? I'd take mine, but I forgot my purse at home.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “My phone?”
“Just to light the way.”
She walked over to the wall of the barn, grabbed a lantern from a hook on the wall, and handed it to me. “Watch out for bears,” she said.
I took the lantern and left the barn with a nervous laugh.
I walked toward the row of portable outhouses that had been rented for the annual hootenanny. The property had a genuine outhouse as well, with a genuine wooden seat that gave genuine slivers—hence the rentals.
Once I was sure Quinn wasn't watching me, I doubled back toward the barn and hung the lantern on a tree branch so I could investigate the burn barrel.
As teenagers, we'd gathered around this old metal barrel countless times, warming our hands and toasting marshmallows over the open flames.
I sniffed the inside of the barrel. Something had been burned there recently.
My heart felt like it might burst out of me from excitement.
I searched around for a stick from the ground and used it to poke around in the barrel's ashes. It turned up a chunk of something that hadn't burned. I leaned over, not caring that the edge of the burn barrel was getting soot on my sweater, and dug through the ashes with both hands. I pulled out a skinny, metal plate.
I'd seen something like this once before, on a reality TV show, when an angry housewife had driven over another housewife's expensive collection of designer shoes. It was the support for a stiletto shoe.
I plunged my hand into the bucket of ashes, digging eagerly for a second matching metal plate, even while part of me hoped my hunch was wrong.
Jackpot.
I pulled up a second piece. It was a perfect match. Either these were the shanks of a pair of women's stiletto heels, or I'd ruined a vintage cheerleader sweater for nothing. The thin sheet of metal would have run under the arch of the foot, connecting the heel to the ball, providing a counterbalance to stop the heel from caving in.
My hunch was right.
“Put that down,” came a voice from behind me.
I whirled around to face Michael Sweet's killer.
Chapter 40
“Stormy,” she said with disdain. “Your sweater is ruined. What are you doing digging around in that dirty old burn barrel?”
“Just helping you clean up. I thought someone dropped some silverware in here.” I held the two pieces of metal limply. “Are these salad tongs?”
“Maybe.” She stuck her chest out, but she didn't move her arms. Her hands were behind her back, hiding something.
I dropped the pieces of metal back into the barrel. They landed with a clang, and a thick puff of ashes enveloped me. The cloud was enough to tickle my nose but not enough for me to use as a magician-style cover and disappear.
“Whatever it was, they're burned up,” I said, dusting off my hands. “No point in fishing them out now.”
Quinn's eyes narrowed to the smallest slits. Her face was lit by the lantern I'd hung on the tree behind me, but I knew my face was in the shadows.
“Just leave it,” she said. “It's probably just scrap that was in a bag of garbage someone used for kindling a fire. Probably some old junk the Russian was trying to get rid of.”
I brushed my fingertips over the black streak across the waistline of my sweater. “I guess we're about done, right? What else do you need tidied up before we leave?”
She didn't move her arms or reveal what was in her hands.
“Stormy, I don't need your help any more. You can just take off.”
I forced a laugh out. “Quinn, you're my ride back into town. Remember? I don't have my car here.”
She swished her mouth from side to side.
“No,” she said. “You're up to something. Tell me what's going on.”
“What's going on? Well, you're the one who's acting super weird and hiding something behind your back. Why don't you tell me what's going on?”